


Not Your Guide

by SometimesyougettheBear



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-11
Updated: 2017-11-11
Packaged: 2019-01-31 23:38:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12692523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SometimesyougettheBear/pseuds/SometimesyougettheBear
Summary: "I wanted for my bones to melt your bones, for my flesh to be your flesh, for us to share one heart between us, beating in perfect time."Saphirra is in love with a Sentinel who has just found his guide.It's not her.This is her story.





	Not Your Guide

_To Alex,_

It’s too easy to write about falling in love.

So many people write about her, her raven black hair and even blacker eyes, the smile that curves into other men’s dreams and nightmares. The sway of her hips, the perfect half-moon paleness of her skin.

It’s so strange to be dead and alive at the same time. I am alive, I breathe even though it hurts, my heart fights me for every breath. But I am dead, to the world, to her and to you.

I was just this dirty imperfect one, who came from nothing. The shacks on the wrong side of the city. Mother hit father with beer bottles, green glass smashing onto the side of his head when she was in one of her rages. Siblings and I cuddled up in the farthest space of the shack, near the door, me in front, them in back.

You picked me up when I was nothing and oh, how I wanted to stay. To be your lover, to be your guide. To be the one you looked at like that, to speak with you mind to mind, my voice echoing in the recesses of your skull.

I wanted for my bones to melt your bones, for my flesh to be your flesh, for us to share one heart between us, beating in perfect time.

You didn’t know, but every weekend I would slip off to the Sentinel Guide center, before the blue dusk dawn had stolen over your face. I would ask them.

Test me. See if I might be a guide.

And every time I could not feel that empathy, hear that warmth, I had no guide voice or guide touch. But I wished, with a burning brilliant wish. With that wanting, so heavy you are swollen from the ache of it.

I wanted that _guide touch_ when I saw you struggle with your movement and steps, when the headaches spiked, when you had days in which you could not open your eyes against the light. When I saw the Sentinel dampening pills in your drawer. For all the dinners we had where your spoon moved with the delicatest of movements, pretending for my sake to enjoy things you could not taste.

I wanted to be the one for you. To bring light and color and sweetness to your life. I wanted to be your candle in the dark.

But no matter how much I love you, no matter how much I adore the curve of your feet, the kindness of your words, the marble blue eyes….I am not the one.

I know I should be happy for you. I look at the glossy glamour magazine.

“Meet Moira, Alex Markett’s new guide”

I see the house you live in together.  I am looking for the throw pillows we bought at a bazaar in India, right outside of New Delhi. Looking for the carved wooden tree from Madagascar, my gift to the man who had everything.

All of them were gone.  Did she throw them away? You? Do you still wear half of my heart on your chest? Or has she erased my place in your heart as easily as she erased my place in your home?

I imagine all my things, all my words and letters, hidden in some black safe cabinet where she never looks. I imagine that sometimes, when she’s sleeping, you watch the ascent and descent of her chest on the white pillow. You sneak out of bed. You open that safe, you re-read my letters, my curly handwriting. You hold those papers near your heart. I imagine that you ache for me the same way I do for you.

It is the only thing that keeps me sane now, the imagination, however untrue, that this ocean of pain inside me is not wholly my own. That your ship and mine might meet somewhere on this ocean of sadness, and even if we never sail together again, know that the other is there.

I left our mansion, it’s hers now.

You were kind and polite about the separation. I wanted to hate you so much. I wanted to despise you. I wanted you to be cruel and evil. I wanted you to say “I never loved you”. I wanted you to be smug, I wanted to have something to rage at. To tell myself you were never worth it.

But you were sorry, You smiled at me with dewy eyes. You grasped my hands, thanked me for the time we spent together. The  divorce settlement was more than generous. Enough money to keep funding my brothers and sister’s private school. Enough money to buy myself a little villa in the south of France. Enough to live on for the rest of my life.

But the money is not you. It is not enough because it is not you.

If I was a normal woman, writing this letter, this is the time I would implore. I would cry that I would “fight for my love!”. And sometimes, in the sheer silence that now pervades my days, I entertain the thought of buying a house next to you. I would dress in my best finery so you would notice me. I would cross your path at every trip overseas you took. My hand would accidentally brush yours at charity dinners and I would speak in a lowly, precious voice, reminding you of the nights we shared. How I sang to you, when you were zoned so far away from me. The nights I held you, my arms wrapped around your shoulders, when you cried of pain. And I cried with you when you were so sad. Because I felt your sadness as deeply as my own. _I loved you that much._  At those moments, I thought I could be your guide.

But I don’t believe in that vision of love.

Love has to be chosen. And you did not choose me. When you saw her, at that dinner, where she came like an angel in a white Vera Wang silk dress and your eyes were magnetically pulled towards her. I knew that everything we had made for the last five years had crumbled like sand. That is was gone. I was left in the dust and I was the only one who would pick through the rubble, trying to salvage those memories.

They don’t talk about me when they talk about the love between Sentinels and Guides. They do talk about her, she and thousands of others, they talk about the nonverbal communication between Guides and Sentinels. The synergy in their movements. The sheer joy when they look at each other.

They talk about how beautiful these Guides are. The tresses are always raven, never black. Always copper, never red. Always the gold color of spun silk, never just yellow. Diamonds lurk in ebony eyes. Malachite green irises glow. The rest of us are dully and grey, we are black and white. We are dun colored foals. Our eyes are not jewels. Not stars. Not deep pools of mystery, or madness.

So many pictures together on TV screens and magazines. So many kisses between bonded pairs. Lips touch, the intimate knowledge of each other’s body written clearly there.

All the boys want to be Sentinels.

And all the girls want to be guides.

And I just wanted to be with you.

I tell myself that it’s okay. But it’s not. It will never be okay. I don’t know how I can every stop loving you, how my chest can ever stop catching in pain, as I try to breathe.

I write these letters you will never read. I pray for God to give me strength. I smile at my siblings, who visit and hope my sister will never fall in love with a Sentinel. I drive to Normandy beach, and I watch the waves roll in and out, forever unending.

I am sad and I luxuriate in that sadness. Let it fill every crevice and center of me, let it wash through me like the waves of Normandy beach.

Maybe,

At some time when I no longer am sad.

I will also no longer love you.

_Love,_

_Saphirra_

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hey everyone!  
> This is my first Sentinel fanfic.  
> I have not abandoned the other fic, Ritornello, but I am stuck in a writer's block right now.  
> It's nanowrimo so I am writing this to warm up my writing muscles.
> 
> I hope you like it even though it's not my usual fare.


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